Asher slings the bags over his shoulders. The bags almost appear too small when he carries them, and it makes me wonder if I didn’t bring enough. Good thing we’ll be stopping at some stores on the way, because now I’m totally second-guessing.
I walk with him to the opposite end of the park, to one of the larger parking lots. I make sure to keep my head down and my face angled toward the ground, so no one who watches the camera will see me.
The alpha drives a dark blue SUV, which he unlocks and opens. Like, he actually opens the passenger-side door for me, as if I don’t have hands of my own, before he goes to put my bags in the backseat.
The action catches me off-guard for a moment, but I shake it off and get in the car. He goes to shut the door for me, but I reach for the door myself and say, “I got it.” I manage to shut the door myself without his help. How amazing, right? An omega closing her own door. Wow.
If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. Because I hate how helpless everyone thinks we are.
I watch as Asher walks around the vehicle and gets in the driver’s seat. He buckles his seatbelt before starting the car, and soon enough we’re driving out of the park. I lean my seat back a bit, and I keep my cap and sunglasses on. I’ll only take them off once we’re out of the city, where there aren’t cameras on every corner.
I don’t speak. I just sit there. Every so often Asher tosses me a glance, and I can tell he’s dying to talk to me, to ask me questions. We kept things short and sweet online in case anyone did stumble across the new account.
Yes, I am well aware it’s not a foolproof plan, but I’m simply making do with what I have. This could all blow up in my face, I know, and that’s fine. All I need is a little bit of time.
It’s only when we’re on the highway out of the city that Asher finally breaks his silence and once again asks, “So how are you, Jess?”
“Oh, I’m great. Just great.” My response drips with sarcasm, and then I remember I’m not talking to my aunt—I’m talking to Asher, the alpha who used to be my friend when we were kids in the same class, before he started to pretend I didn’t exist. Of course, it didn’t help when I had to be homeschooled for a while directly after the accident, but when I went back…
When I went back to school, everyone treated me differently. The teachers, the other kids. Everyone. The teachers thought I was breakable and still on the mend. The other kids thought I was some pariah, someone they just didn’t want to talk to. In thetime I’d been gone, Asher had become one of those kids, and I was too depressed to try talking to him, so I just let it be.
I let it be and I spent so much time alone, and it didn’t change once I presented and went to a school with all omegas.
Asher shoots me a grin. “Okay, now that you got that out of your system, how are you really?”
I sigh. The way he talks, like it’s only been a week or so since we last spoke, makes me feel awfully weird inside. Too familiar. We might’ve been friends when we were kids, but now? Now we were as good as strangers.
Still, I know he won’t let up until I tell him the truth, so I whisper, “I’ve been better.”
Outside, the scenery passes by quickly. We’re out of the city, driving through the suburbs, thick concrete walls lining the sides of the highway to protect the houses just beyond from the highway’s noise and the ugly sight of constant cars.
“That’s more like it,” he says. “Is that why you want to get away and go to the cabin? Need to reset or something?”
I didn’t tell himexactlywhy I needed to go to his family’s cabin. In truth, it’s none of his business, but again, since he’s helping me, I suppose I do owe him the truth. His family has loads of money, obviously. It isn’t like hearing the fact that my future pack could get half of my inheritance would sway him. He doesn’t need any more money.
“My aunt’s been on my ass to find a pack,” I mutter as I pick at my nails on my lap. “I… I don’t really agree with her about it, but she doesn’t seem to give a shit. She’s been signing me up for every matching ceremony at the Omega Garden even though I keep telling her I don’t want to go. Before the last one, I did some snooping around her office while she was at the club.”
Asher comes from the same world I do; he’ll know I don’t mean a club where you dress scantily and grind on strangers.
“I found something in her desk, in a locked drawer,” I go on. “It was a will. Basically, if I match with a pack before my first heat, that pack will get half of the inheritance my parents left me, and my guardian will get the other half. I know that sounds pretty standard, but there was another clause in there, one that said if I don’t match with a pack before my first heat, everything goes to me.”
He nods once. “And you want it all.”
“It’s not so much that I want it all. It’s more so that I don’t want my aunt to get anything else. She’s already living in my parents’ house. She already got half the Dryers’ fortune when my uncle died a few years back. Where will that money go with her? She doesn’t have any kids of her own. She never remarried. What makes her deserving and me not?”
Asher seems to think about this. “Even if your future pack would get half, that half would still technically be yours, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, unless I end up in a pack where the alphas don’t give a shit about what their omega wants. You might not know it, but there are a lot of packs out there like that, Asher. A lot. Maybe not in our circles, but with how badly my aunt wants to get rid of me, I wouldn’t put it past her to sell me to the first pack who’s willing to pay.”
“Oh, come on. She’s not that bad, is she?”
All I say to that is a quiet, “You never met her.”
And it’s true. He never did. He doesn’t know how she is, how she acts. His parents are all still alive, still in a happy, loving pack. I just had the two parents, and once they died… everything changed for me. He doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up in a house that used to be warm and inviting, and all it is now is cold and quiet.
“She’s not a nice person,” I say. “She’s mean. She’s cold. She’s… nothing like a mother should be. Honestly, it’s probablya good thing she couldn’t have kids of her own. Well-adjusted wouldn’t be in their vocabulary.”
“Is it in yours?”
